Lake Charles (2 page)

“Then let’s hump it out there. We’re already late.” His pointed glance landed on her.

“Cobb, we all overslept,” I said.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Did you come to fish or talk?” he asked me.

“You know I’m psyched to fish. That means we have to get through that.” My finger pointed at the gunk. “Cobb, a hatchet is behind my cab seat. Grab it and lop off a couple of saplings, say, eight feet long. We can pole through, and Edna will follow us on her jet ski.”

“No, I better go cut them. He’ll chop off the rest of his foot.” She stamped away to my cab truck.

My eyes lifted to track a jetliner streaking its vapory contrail across the blue dome of sky, and I brooded how the jetliner took the VIPs to important places. Meanwhile an unimportant yokel like me stayed mired in an unimportant spot. Tennessee was too hidebound, and I ached to broaden my horizons. Whose fault was it I hadn’t? The inertia was inescapable. After I powered by this bogus homicide rap, I’d shove off one dawn for Alaska. While Edna was gone, I moved the Igloo cooler from my cab truck to my bass boat. She hadn’t appreciated my making our beer stop.

Two willow poles landed at our boots. “Here we go.” She returned the hatchet and unbungeed the jet ski from the trailer.

“They look made-to-order. Thanks, sis.”

My handclaps shooed away the blackbirds squawking on the cattail reeds that choked the concrete ramp. Cobb and I trampled down the reeds and forged a path to the water. Then he directed me backing in the trailer. The jet ski he hoisted off had been on the market long enough to woo its own cult following. She’d borrowed the money from her adoring father-in-law. We offloaded our bass boats, mostly bank-owned, to rest floating in the lake.

He raked his fingers over his black bristle for hair. “Edna, do me a favor. Act as if you have half a brain riding that crotch rocket. Steer away from our fishing grounds, too.”

Her thumb hiked up. “Perch and rotate.”

“That’s the way. Pile on the sarcasm. My shoulders are big.”

I rolled my eyes skyward before we got started. He and I plying the willow saplings poled our bass boats through the algae. Inching our way forward worked up a sweat. My arm joints burned while the sun roasted my shoulders, but our engines had no ability to beat this gunk zone. On the jet ski, she followed along in our track.

After free in the clear water, he saw the blobs on his fishfinder radar screen. “Carp.” Disgust tinged his outburst.

Loving it, she grinned, set to rib him. A finger at my lips did a pre-emptive
“s-h-h-h.”

Tapping a fingernail on his radar screen, he shouted. “Nuts on ’em. Head out!”

He blasted off, I tailed him, and we churned up a rooster-tail of water. Within moments, we rocketed at full tilt. Hanging off our left, she rode upright on the jet ski, a bullet-shaped speedster she steered by its handlebars. Her knees flexed to take our punishing turbulence. She smiled and flashed me a victory sign.

Closer to the opposite shore, he signaled me with flat palms to slacken my speed. She streaked by us, her hand waving. At the motel, she’d promised me not to razz him, and I hoped she kept it. The odds didn’t look so rosy. We engaged the sedate trolling motors powered off the car batteries and selected Skinny Minnies to cast in the shady pools. A dozen tries later, we hadn’t attracted a strike.

“Try the purple gummy worms.”

We plied various lures with the same snakebitten luck. Well beyond us, she smoked on the jet ski, cutting nifty figure eights over the water.

He gestured a hand at her. “Behold: our own wild woman of Borneo.”

“Aw, she’s not afraid to break a nail. Let her have her fun.”

He trawled over to me. I knew he’d been smarting since their break up on the Fourth. My two favorite people in the world should stay pals, but my meddling was doomed to fail. I did better at fishing except this afternoon was one anglers preferred to forget. He splashed into the lake, waded ashore, and chased down the grasshoppers. I impaled them as hook bait, but the bad fishing karma dogged us. Our cork bobbers sat inert on the water’s surface. Seated again on his bass boat, he lay fire to a crumpled Marlboro, sucked in, and exhaled with a smoky vow.

“I’m not budging from here without a caught bass.”

My seat squeaked as I leaned back, appreciative for the mulberry tree shade. We had it made by accessing any point on Lake Charles. Chumps stuck ashore using their bamboo fishing poles rubbernecked at us, but trouble brewed in our paradise. Simon at the bait shop claimed the bass population was on the downswing due to all the silt flushing into Lake Charles. By next spring, we’d lower our sights to catch bluegill, sun perch, or, God spare us, carp. But that was for next spring, not today.

“The bass might be hungrier at the earth dam.”

“Too many stumps and logs are snagged there. That dike is also set to uncork.” Shirtless, he also wasn’t fond of disrupting his sunbathing. “Aren’t we in a great spot?”

“This sure beats breathing the ink fumes.”

“Is there any future in a 9-to-5?” He mopped his forehead with a bandanna.

“None. Did you stow any vodka in my truck?”

“Vodka is for home sipping. Any more brewskis?”

“Only Rolling Rock but it is cold. Think fast.” I lateralled the squatty, green bottle I’d plucked from the Igloo cooler. “Nifty snag, Aparicio.”

Cobb cracked the bottle top, guzzled beer, and smacked his lips with zest. He eyed his motionless cork bobber and then me reflected in his mantis green sunshades. “So I put it to you. What’s so wrong with drinking a beer now and then?”

My hand swatted a deer fly gnawing on my elbow. “Maybe emptying bed pans and mopping floors makes her stubborn.”

“After she comes home from her shift, I tread on eggshells,” said Edna.

“Her people are also religious. They see visions,” I said, my own dreams with Ashleigh fresh in my mind.

“But Mama Jo isn’t that far-fetched,” said Edna.

“I once dated a Gatlinburg honey that was,” said Cobb. “One Sunday evening, this fire-snorting evangelist threw out an altar call. Well, Angelina Sue scampered off up front and crashed to the floor, imbued with the Holy Ghost or epilepsy. Then she bounded up and kowtowed at the pot-bellied wood stove. The steel crackled red-hot. Now, dig this part. She bear hugged the stove.” He extended his burly arms and closed them to illustrate his point.

“Ouch,” I said.

He grinned. “So you’d think, but it didn’t faze her. No blisters, no welts, and not a single burn lay on her. It had to be a genuine act of faith. Later I kissed her body cool and white as peppermint all over.”

“You did, eh?” Edna’s voice took a brittle edge.

I cringed again.

He frowned at her. “Oh, get over yourself. This was ages before we dated. In fact, I never cheated on you, baby cakes. I deserve your thanks.”

“Thank you. I wish I could tell you the same.”

His manly dignity lost its starch. “What does that mean?”

I spoke up. “I tend to believe his story.”

“As a guy, you would.”

He threaded a blue-and-white spoon on the swivel hook and recast his fishing rig out ten yards to splash on the lake. “Why did I let Brendan invite you to be a thorn in my side today?” He reeled in the spoon.

“Me? You’re the one who can’t say three words without baring your fangs.” Her icy glare skirmished with his. “Brendan is trying his best to help us. The least you can do is show him a little gratitude …”

I left them to bicker and tripped across Lake Charles and up the wooded slopes to savor Will Thomas (he was the only white Cherokee chief) Mountain. A grassy bald capped it, and a dilapidated fire tower perched on the grassy bald. These grass-capped mountains made for a local enigma. Our superstitious cousins in Murfreesboro swore the UFOs, not the Good Lord, had created them.

Mama Jo held that the meteorite bombardment annihilating the dinosaurs had also scorched the permanent grassy balds. I knew the panoramic vista—miles of leafy green—from this one was a picturesque memory to store away. If stranded in an electrical storm, I’d also learned, like Moby Dick’s Ahab, you made an ace human lightning rod. Maybe besides suffering the fernlike bruises and my eyebrows singed off the zap had scrambled my brains. It gave me the haunting dreams. I also hated how Uncle Sam declared eminent domain, and the bully took over any desired land. A smattering of the original hill families still eked out their waning years in the parklands …

“Brendan, are you off gathering wool?” It was Edna. “You always drift off into your own little world. I asked you why should I live with Cobb again.”

Smiling, I shrugged. “Because you grace the trailer park with your class.”

“Ha. But he hasn’t changed one iota since I left him.”

“Aw, quit busting Brendan’s chops.” Cobb drained the last slug of the Rolling Rock. “He’s trying his best to help us. The least you can do is show him a little gratitude,” said Cobb, parroting her words.

Her glare rewarded him.

“Yo, got any more beer?” he asked me.

Now angry, she knew only to attack. “More beer? You never know when enough is enough.”

“That’s the last bottle,” I said, my voice a little weak.

“We’ll head back soon,” he said. “Get some more.”

“What. Honestly. You drink like a fish.”

Snarling, he took her bait. “You love to strum that harp, angel face. I’m pretty sick and tired of hearing it, too.”

“Your drinking is what worries me, Cobb. Some night driving home drunk as a skunk you’ll plow into a Mack truck.”

“That’ll be the day. I respect my limits, huh, Brendan?”

I did my best ambiguous shrug.

“Drop me a line if you ever grow up.” She jerked the jet ski to life and scribed a compact doughnut, her kicked up water droplets spritzing into our faces. Jogging the throttle sent her galloping away toward the earth dam. The foamy water swirled in her wake, and the jet ski’s engine dimmed to a buzz.

“She flies off at any time. Hotheaded, Lord yes, she is. Maybe that crotch rocket will cool her off. I sure can’t. Getting hitched almost undid me, but I ejected in the nick of time.”

I slapped at a cluster of gnats. I saw a kernel of truth in what he said, but she was also my twin sister. I’d read or heard somewhere that brother and sister fraternal twins were unusually close and protective of each other. Staying pinned in the middle of this sniping crossfire sucked. “Buying more beer was a bad idea.”